Word: buckley
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...equal parts H. L. Mencken and Charles Maurras, add the crusading zeal of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, the wit of Fred Allen, the voice and presence of John Barrymore, the charisma of Bing Crosby, and you have the Caudillo of conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr. [Nov. 3]. Now if only the Conservatives could persuade him to seek the G.O.P. nomination for U.S. Senator next year or enter him in the lists against Javits or ex-Mayor Wagner, New Yorkers would have a choice instead of the traditional Tweedledum-Tweedledee Liberal shell game...
...would gainsay William F. Buckley Jr., entertainer, court jester of conservatism. His regrettable ineffectualness as socio-political philosopher-activist is traceable and proportionate to an unconcealed intellectual narcism. Buckley's a mental muscle-beacher who can't resist rippling his grey matter to dazzle bystanders. For sheer sophistic jabberwocky and an excruciating reciprocity of cleverness Buckley's ideal Firing Line partner would be Marshall McLuhan. But stack him against self-educated Dockhand Eric Hoffer, the man of passionately simple convictions, and Buckley would do a fast fade from brilliance. Because he evinces about as much commitment...
...relieve the magazine's annual deficit of $200,000 or so, Buckley contributes his own substantial earnings from his column, from Firing Line, and from his lectures (fee per appearance: $1,000). Nevertheless, every year he has to warn of the magazine's imminent extinction unless contributions are forthcoming. The latest appeal, last June, brought 2,000 contributions, enough to make up the loss...
...Maneuver. During the years he has edited the Review, Buckley's own views have remained consistently conservative; few people are permitted to influence his thought. One who did was Whittaker Chambers, who added some warmth and humanity to Buckley's bookish conservatism. Chambers, says Buckley, "was an anti-theory man, a poet-not an exegete." A line he once wrote to Buckley is engraved on his memory: "To live is to maneuver." And despite his devotion to conservatism, Buckley has learned to maneuver. He has urged his fellow Roman Catholics to moderate their hostility toward birth control...
Though he resists suggestions that he has become a liberal in any sense, Buckley admits to being "less insistent on rhetorical purity than I was a few years back. It's one thing to complain that Government has got into a situation. It's another to keep repeating it all your life. In an ideal society, I'd be against compulsory arbitration; yet I think people are a bore who create a theology around private enterprise." It has been a firm conservative tenet that the state must be kept as limited as possible. Yet that belief...